Critic Reviews

Overall, I was very impressed with Return to Na Pali. GT took all the good points of Unreal and improved on them, meanwhile fixing a lot of the problems from the original. The level design is excellent and the levels are a blast to play through. The Multi-Player support still isn’t up to par, but it is at least playable and the weapons are more usable. The included deathmatch levels are fair, but still don’t have the finesse of Quake 2 or 3’s levels. As a single player game, I found Return to Na Pali to be very enjoyable even if a bit on the short side.

How come everyone around here in the office always cringes when a mission pack comes in? What a shame. Especially when it's for a first person shooter. I mean, there are a ton of them, and you can't help but to play them for a couple of weeks, with a few exceptions of course, and then have them mysteriously vanish to the back of your video game library. It would be unfair if I included Unreal in that pile of games that now gather dust, but I have to admit, I haven't been playing it as much since the release of Half-Life, Thief... the Quake III test. Will Unreal Mission Pack: Return to Na Pali bring Unreal back into your gaming digestive track? Yep.

Overall, Return to Na Pali just doesn't quite come up to par. Fans of Unreal will find themselves right at home in the mission pack since very little new has been added to the game. The few new weapons and enemies do add to the gameplay, but not enough to bring the game up to its predecessor's level, especially since other titles released in the year since Unreal have pushed the cutting edge for first-person gaming much higher. If you loved the original, then take a look at this one -- you will enjoy it as well. But if, like me, you uninstalled Unreal shortly after playing Half-Life then this one is probably worth skipping.

What's not to like? Well, some of the levels seem a bit unbalanced in their difficulty, going from medium to hard in a matter of seconds. There are also some annoying glitches in the level design, one of which had me trapped in an area I couldn't get out of. I had to re-load a previous game. Still, though, this is a great mission pack. There are also some additional multi-player maps and modes unique to the Na Pali mission pack. If you liked Unreal, the mission pack does it justice. If you never were into the game, then there's nothing much different to see here. This is just a nice, fun addition to a game that rocks.

Unreal was all about exploring beautifully-detailed but empty worlds, throwing a few switches and battling it out with some admittedly tough enemies. Return to Na Pali does nothing at all to buck those trends. This would be acceptable with most expansion packs, but so much has been done during the intervening year that Unreal, and thus Return to Na Pali, seems a bit antiquated when it comes to gameplay. It will please fans of the original, but it would have been nice if more had been done to involve the player in the proceedings. I can’t say Return to Na Pali is bad simply because it sticks to the theme established by Unreal, but I can say it is what its predecessor was, only slightly more so. If you liked Unreal’s trek through a mysterious alien planet, then Return to Na Pali will give you more of what you crave. If you’re searching for interactivity along the lines of Half-Life and Thief, however, you won’t find it in the canyons and temples of this world.

My final thoughts are that this addon is certainly not worth your money, its basically just a bad attempt to keep up with the original Unreal and I believe that the original was much more impressive and innovative then the Unreal: Return To Na Pali add-on.

The game's engine is still one of the prettiest on the et, and Unreal gets credit for being the first true Quake II-killer in single-play, even if games using an enhanced Quake II engine are now giving it a serious run for its money). A return trip to the hellish planet shows us that Unreal still has a few tricks up its claw-bearing sleeves. With that said, Return to Na Pali is mediocre as mission packs go. A few new weapons and monsters barely make up for the uninspired story and mission design. Pick it up only if you must revisit last year's shooter.

The bottom line is that Return to Na Pali is a thoroughly average mission pack. Like most mission packs, it adds a few new decent weapons, levels, and monsters, but nothing spectacular. Unlike most mission packs, it was released over a year after the original game. Level design is good, but after a year, we had hoped for a little more than the standard button-and-switch-flipping marathon. If you really enjoyed Unreal's single-player experience, the mission pack won't disappoint. If you thought the original was mostly a pretty visual treat that dragged on too long, you'll likely find the mission pack to be more of the same.

For a game as extensible as Unreal, the challenge of making an impact with an expansion pack is inversely proportional to the age of the original work. Each passing day brings new and more sophisticated competition from the game's network of amateur developers. Return to Na Pali, arriving approximately one year after the introduction of its parent product, simply fails to innovate. While professional enough, it is wholly lacking the spark of inspiration necessary to maintain the interest of all but the most die-hard Unreal fanatics.

Where Unreal evoked quality, polish, and ingenuity, Return to Na Pali merely blurts mediocrity. It is a decent diversion for Unreal fans who want a little more Unreal and don't care too much about anything else. But as a simple expansion pack, Return to Na Pali does little to expand. In fact, much like the abhorrent Mysteries of the Sith expansion pack for Jedi Knight, it makes the whole game seem like less instead of more. Pick this one up if you have to kill time while waiting for Unreal Tournament. But tarry not too long, and look elsewhere on the shelf for that spark of creativity that makes the great games.